


DRUNK HISTORY: President Kennedy’s Little Sister - Rosemary Kennedy

by nikiverse



Category: Drunk History
Genre: Drunk History - Freeform, Historical, History, Other, Rosemary Kennedy - Freeform, Special Olympics, The Kennedys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-22
Updated: 2015-09-22
Packaged: 2018-04-22 22:19:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4852661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nikiverse/pseuds/nikiverse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>CITY: Massachusetts<br/>HOST: Derek Waters<br/>SUMMARY: Comedienne Artemis Pebdani talks about John F. Kennedy's older sister, Rosemary Kennedy  - who reportedly suffered from mental illness and then was further incapacitated by a failed surgery. Complete.</p>
            </blockquote>





	DRUNK HISTORY: President Kennedy’s Little Sister - Rosemary Kennedy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [coltsbane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/coltsbane/gifts).



Derek looks at Artemis and asks, “What are we drinking?”

Artemis shoves a drink into his hand, “It’s soda and … something.”

“I have always been a huge fan of something.”

Artemis walks over to Derek and punches his arm, laughing. He spills the soda and something on his lap.

* * *

In 1918, Rose Kennedy goes into labor. While Rose is pregnating everywhere, she looks to the nurse and asks, “Are you equipped to handle this? Because you’re not a doctor.”

And the nurse says, “No, I’m a nurse.”

Rosemary shakes her head. “No, no. I can’t have you delivering my baby; I’m a Kennedy for Chrissakes. I need a _doctor_.”

“Well, it looks like the baby is ready to exit your vagina. But seeing how I’m no doctor, I could be wrong. We’ll just push this [the nurse grunts] back in and wait.” The nurse crosses Rose’s legs to keep the baby inside.

The doctor arrives two hours later, and they deliver an oxygen-deprivated baby.

* * *

“Where’s my camera, Derek?”

Derek points to his right.

Artemis whispers, “ _Two hours._ ”

“Did the baby die?” Derek asks.

Artemis looks back at Derek. “No, the baby doesn’t die. The baby comes out. They call it Rosemary, after the herb.”

* * *

So Rosemary is alive. And kicking. But kicking later than the other kids. Like, a lot. Years behind even. In the kicking abilities.

And Rose sees her baby just absolutely sucking at everything.

“Is your baby crawling?” Rose asks her non-Kennedy friends. “Because my baby is not crawling.”

“Is that your baby standing?” Rose whispers, “ _Because mine’s not doing that._ ”

“Goddammit, is your baby already walking? What a fucking show-off. Mine’s not doing any of that.”

One day, Rose grabs her daughter by the shoulder and says, “Get your shit together because you’re a goddamn Kennedy. We got shit to do. People to rule over.”  
  


* * *

“More Coke with stuff in it?” Artemis asks.

“Oh yeah,” Derek says. He leans over and Artemis pours him part of her drink. The concoction slides down her glass and onto the floor.

“Fuck.”

"Oh God."  
  


* * *

Finally, Rosemary does stuff, but she’s still not very good at stuff. Other kids are writing novels and dissertations and steering sleds, while Rosemary is working on cursive and arith-matics. 

Rosemary’s parents finally take her to experts. And experts at this time don’t know about autism and bipolar and disorders. So they get this chart out and point to where the normal kids are and then they point to down where Rosemary is. Rosemary is _way_ under the normal kids on the chart.

Rosemary is in the red area, the “Retard” area.

Joe and Rose are like, “Oh fuck. We got a retard on our hands.”

Joe is pissed. He tells Momma Rose, “Honey, I’m running for pubic offices and stuff. I can’t have a retard on my hands. She’s going to ruin my photos and fuck fuck fuck what are we going to do?”

Rose shrugs her shoulders. “I don’t know honey, we could-“

But Joe is a real cheese-dick and interrupts Rose. “No, no honey, I got a better idea.” And they send her to boarding school.

Rosemary starts writing letters to her family, saying how she’s super lonely. But no one visits her.

* * *

  
“Are you guys going to add sad music to that part?” Artemis asks.

* * *

  
When Rosemary was 19, her dad moved to Great Britain because of an ambassadorship.  
  


* * *

“There are small ships and big ships but the best ships are ambassador ships.”

* * *

They move Rosemary to a convent school and she just fucking loves it. So much so, she starts to gain weight. And that makes her cheese-dick dad angry. So Joe writes a letter to the school saying that Rosemary is too fat and they need to fix that shit.

So about a year later, they move back to the US. Rosemary has her weight under control and goes back to boarding school. But then she also gets hot. Like super-hot. Guys want to bang her hot.

And quote they unquote say that Rosemary would leave her boarding school at night and quote wander the streets unquote.

* * *

“What does ‘wander the streets’ mean?” Derek asks.

“Loooking at the moon. Fucking boys. Standard street stuff.”

Derek nods.

* * *

So Joe is like “Whhhhat is going on? I got politics to do and I … I, I just can’t have illogical, … illegitimate pregnancies and what if Rosemary steals a car and accidentally kills someone. We gotta nip this retardation in the bud.”

So, unbeknownst to Momma Rose, Joe takes Rosemary to a doctor that specializes in new retardation-healing techniques.

An experimental brain surgery.

A lomotomy.

* * *

“A what?” Derek asks.

“A bolotomy. Wait. I know that’s not the word.” Artemis holds a finger up. “I got it now.”

Derek waits.

“A lomotomy.”

“Still wrong.”

“A bolotomy.”

“You already said that.”

* * *

A lomotomy is where the doctors have a hole in the head. And they cut away brain until the patient is not retarded anymore.

So, after the lomotomy, Rosemary is _fuuuucked_ up. Like, beyond repair. She couldn’t talk. She couldn’t walk. She was even lesser smart. She urinated everywhere. Like, she basically could not live on her own.

* * *

Derek says, “Wait, now I’m sad.”

“I know! It’s so sad.”

* * *

So, Joe is crushed. This surgery was supposed to help his daughter, but it incapitates her. He feels so bad. And because he’s still cheese-dicking around, he never visits or sees his daughter again. FOREVER, never sees her again.

After the brain spearmint, the Kennedys tell people Rosemary was super secretive … or teaching school in the middle of nowhere to other mentally ill people, and that’s why she never made photo ops. But the Kennedys _really_ put her in places for mentally ill people.

* * *

“You mean, they lied?” Derek asks.

Artemis laughs. “Yes, this is my shocked face.” Artemis puts down her drink and places her hands on her cheeks and opens her mouth in a wide circle. She laughs again and grabs her drink.

Derek laughs too. “Wait,” he says. “Weren’t we just sad?”

“Oh yeah! Now I’m sad again.”

* * *

Some of the Kennedys come around to sanity, to human decency. They would invite Rosemary to their house. And Rosemary liked playing cards, and she liked long strolls on the Washington DCs.

Oh yeah, she could swim. Maybe with floaties, I don’t know. And, being a hot chick, she still liked getting compliments on her appearance.

* * *

“Like this: _You’s a fly one, Ms. Rosemary._ ” Artemis winks to Derek. 

Derek nods. “Chicks love the ‘pliments.”

“Chicks love the ‘ments.”

“Compliments, motherfucker. Do you love them?”

* * *

Momma Rose kept the bolotomy a secret until she died.

* * *

“So, it was a super long secret. In the scale of secrets, it was much longer than the Bill-insky. That’s Brangelina, but with Monica and Bill.”

“I was with you on that one. 100%. Like, soul-to-soul with you,” Derek says.

* * *

And Rosemary Kennedy lived til she was in her 80’s. So she lived a super long life. A super, long life full of disappointing dads and secrets and boarding schools.

But, every rose has a silver lining, a November rain. And Rosemary’s sister, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, saw how unfair and unjust people with mental disabilities were treated. She was sad they didn’t even have places to play!

“It’s a travesty, that mentally ill kids don’t have places to play,” Eunice would always say.

So she started a camp.

And that has morphed into the Special Olympics. 

* * *

“So there’s a little happy ending,” Artemis says.

“Boom. Done. The Special Olympics,” Derek says.

“Yep. Rosemary Kennedy. Guilt. Special Olympics. Simple as that.”

“We salute you, Rosemary Kennedy.”

“Okay, Derek. Let’s shoot fireworks.”

“Okay.”


End file.
